For almost an hour, Lieutenant Deanna Calavicci glanced back and forth between the mindless run of commercials and prime-time programs on the hotel's television set and the seemingly inert communication bracelet on the dresser next to it.
By no means did she believe that the high-tech com bracelet, which she'd shed upon entering the rented room, ceased to work simply because she'd taken it off. On more than one occasion, she'd harbored suspicions that Ziggy—the hybrid supercomputer that ran Project Quantum Leap—delighted in fooling her operators and would let the electronic devices linked to her hard drive appear to be dormant, without flashing lights or sounds to indicate that a connection still existed. Deanna knew better than that.
Ziggy listened. Ziggy always listened. She had no "off" button.
When another loud, banal commercial flashed across the wide, colorful screen of motion at the end of the bed, Deanna reached for the remote on the bedside table and turned the television off, dropped the remote next to her on the queen bed, then closed her eyes and sighed.
"So what do I do?" she asked aloud.
She opened her eyes again and watched as the com bracelet sparked to life. Its electric blue light flashed twice, but no verbal response came out.
"He doesn't know us," Deanna continued. "We changed his future. He has no memories whatsoever of the Projects—not Quantum Leap, and not Engram."
"You don't know that for certain," the computer chimed in, the words infused with human-like intonations. "It is possible that on some level, he maintains a link to our operations. After all, he did exhibit a familiarity with you, even though in this version of his existence, you two have never met. Nevertheless, there was a connection there."
"True enough."
She sat up and pulled one of the thick bed pillows, which she'd used to prop herself up to watch TV with, onto her lap. Her fingers dug into the cotton pillowcase as she squeezed it against her chest, then she loosened her grip.
"Do we bring him back in?" she pondered. "Just because he's connected to you… to us, somewhere in space and time… would it do us any good, if he doesn't know anything?"
"I'm afraid that I can't answer that."
Deanna smirked. "Ziggy, if anyone can answer that, it's you."
Ziggy did not respond to that, nor did the scientist expect her to. Deanna made no secret of her suspicions that Ziggy exceeded her programming, to the point where she possessed an almost-omniscient ability, but Ziggy seemed to delight in refusing to admit such a level of superiority.
Deanna put one hand in the air and waved it around, then let it drop.
"I mean, was it just chance that I came here? I chose a random spot on the map for a vacation, flew to San Diego on the last available flight, stopped at the first hotel that I came across, and not two hours later, he checked in. I found him without even knowing that I was looking for him."
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," Ziggy replied in a cryptic tone.
"Like hell," came the sharp retort. "Not in our world."
Deanna waved her hand again, this time in dismissal, then gave the pillow another squeeze.
"Here's what I picture. We have some conversations on the topic, I tell him about what we're doing out there in the desert and how he's a part of it, and then one of two things will happen. One is that he walks away. He laughs at me, calls me a liar, discounts everything I tell him, and ghosts me. The other is that he believes it all, comes back to Stallion's Gate with me, and he spends the rest of his life wrapped up in the Project. Just like me and just like the Admiral."
"And that bothers you?" Ziggy prodded.
"Yea, it does." Deanna tossed the pillow behind her. "I chose this. As an officer in the United States Navy, and as a scientist, I accept that it's my duty to be an Observer. That is, until we get both Sam and Sammi Jo back from wherever they Leaped to. But I don't know if I can… I don't know, 'recruit' someone for this."
"It is a difficult existence," Ziggy agreed. "He has spent the past fifty years in the profession of acting. That is hardly the appropriate background to prepare for the demands placed on an Observer."
"But right now," Deanna persisted, "everything is falling on the Admiral's shoulders. He's taking care of two Leapers at once—if that's even possible. And if both Sam and Sammi Jo get in a bind at the same time, the Admiral is in no shape for that."
Deanna puffed out a breath and stood up, then began to pace. It made it easier to refer to her father as "the Admiral," to maintain a certain emotional distance between herself and her father in the workplace. It also made it easier to think of him as "the Admiral" when it came to his medical conditions. Admiral Albert Calavicci had suffered two strokes over the past year, a small one that had been reversed with prompt medical intervention, and a more significant one that resulted in a minor but permanent weakness in one leg.
And yet he's still working, she thought with some bitterness. Me, I've been ordered to go away for a little while to "recover." As if the nightmares are going to stop just because I went and got a tan.
"The problem is," she continued, as she pushed aside the resentful thoughts tied to her forced military leave, "even in the best-case scenario where he agrees to come to New Mexico, we're still talking about two men who are… you know, in their golden years. If there's any recruiting that should be done, it should be with someone younger. By the way, I am open to suggestions on this idea," she concluded with a sideways glance at the bracelet.
"It is not my place to offer them."
"Yea. Right."
She scratched her fingers against the scar on the side of her neck. She steadfastly refused to look at that area in the mirror anymore, but it still bothered her that she could still feel the distorted skin there. The glass from the broken passenger window had cut deeply into her neck, but thanks to a highly skilled team of surgeons and diligent aftercare, she'd not only survived but came out the other side of rehabilitation with an almost-complete recovery.
"Lieutenant Calavicci," Ziggy replied with a hint of a smile in her voice, "it's almost five o'clock. Don't forget about your dinner date."
She stopped by the door, then turned and put her back against it. "It's not a date."
"You fancy him, and he fancies you," Ziggy contradicted in a playful tone. "Whatever history you have in your mind, he knows nothing about you except what you've shown him, and he likes what he's seen. To him," she remarked, "it's a date."
She glanced down at the scar on the top of her hand, the location where once, in another dimension of reality, Edward St. John the Fifth had extracted nerve cells to connect to a hybrid supercomputer called Alpha. The distracted, emotionally distant scientist that St. John had been when they first knew each other at Project Engram couldn't have been more different from the older man she'd met in the lobby of the hotel only a few hours before.
Deanna tried to dismiss the thoughts that came crowding into her mind when she thought of St. John's intense, dark brown eyes, but instead found herself staring at the ceiling, lost in thought.
"Lieutenant?"
"What if I don't mention it? Any of it?" Deanna walked over and picked up the com bracelet, then slipped it onto her wrist. "What if I just have dinner with him and enjoy the evening? Maybe I should just try that. No Project talk, no explanations about different dimensions and a tangled-up history, just… go to dinner, and have a regular evening with a nice man who happens to be named Edward St. John the Fifth."
Deanna smiled to herself. It had been over four years since she'd first accepted the assignment to Project Engram, which then morphed into Project Quantum Leap through the efforts of Doctor Sam Beckett, Al Calavicci, herself, and an unwitting St. John. It would be nice to be freed from what she would jokingly call "a DNA-deep responsibility," and to have one night of normalcy, far away from everything that had happened in New Mexico.
"Wear the black A-line dress," Ziggy suggested. "It gives you a fabulous figure."